Friday, September 11, 2009

'Return To Corriebush' - Another Great African Recipe Book !

"Return To Corriebush" by Lynn Bedford Hall is a book set in the fictitious town of Corriebush in South Africa and contains many lovely recipes - sandwiched in between the delightful stories of 4 local women

My parents gave me the South African based book ‘Return To Corriebush’ by Lynn Bedford Hall for my birthday this year. Those of you who regularly read my blog will know that I love reading and have a collection of recipe books from all around the world - including another written by the same author called ‘More Food With Flair’. In fact, I’ve featured recipes from this book on my blog in the past – some favourites of which include ‘Mousse Mocha Tia’ and ‘Lemony Crumbed Pork Chops’ (click on the name of each to view the accompanying recipe/blog post).

“Return To Corriebush” is the sequel to “Fig Jam and Foxtrot” which was an international best seller written by the same author. (Unfortunately, I have not yet read ‘Fig Jam & Foxtrot” and was unable to find it when I looked for it – albeit briefly – on my recent trip to South Africa.)

The book is one of my favourite kinds – a story (set in the fictitious town of Corriebush in the Karoo, South Africa) about the lives of 4 women, with recipes at the end of each of the four chapters, divided into Starters, Mains, Desserts & Baking.

The recipes all sound delicious – how does ‘Mini Cucumber Cheesecakes with Avocado’ sound as a starter dish, followed by ‘Poached Fish with Anchovy, Mayo & Crunchy Sage’ as a main course and perhaps if you still have room for dessert - some ‘Chocolate Fudge Cups’ ? Or, you could just skip dessert and have some ‘Coffee and Spice Layer Cake’ with a nice cup of coffee (or tea) to round your meal off.

The book has delightful colour illustrations throughout the ‘story’ chapters about the 4 women, but my one criticism would be that none of the recipes are illustrated / have photographs. I don’t know about you, but no matter how mouthwatering the recipe sounds, I always like to see a photo of what the final dish will look like before I make it ?

This is a delightful book and I’m pleased to add it to my “African” recipe book shelf – I’m sure you’ll see a few recipes from it cropping up on the blog now and then and in the meantime, you can try a tasty recipe for ‘Rosemary Buttermilk Scones’ from the book which I’ve already published on the blog over here.